


Wonderwall

by Miss_Peletier



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Dancing, F/M, Fluff with Angst, Songfic, pre-season 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-01
Updated: 2016-07-01
Packaged: 2018-07-19 11:25:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7359361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_Peletier/pseuds/Miss_Peletier
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Both Marcus and Abby have heard the song “Wonderwall”, but Marcus remembers it quite a bit differently than she does. Of course, hearing it again brings back some old memories…and helps make some new ones.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wonderwall

“I’ve heard this song before,” Abby observed as she stood, getting ready to leave. Marcus watched as she sighed and took out her ponytail holder, running her fingers through her hair. It had been a long few hours of work, and she was undoubtedly ready to head back to her quarters.

          There was a good reason Abby Griffin was in his room at dusk: there were supply run missions to Mount Weather that needed her approval, but it was late and he’d already been working for most of the day.  Rather than going back to the Council Room and turning on the lights and transporting all his materials and drafts there, he asked if she’d be willing to work in his quarters tonight. She was.

          “I think I heard it long time ago,” she continued, wistful.

          Marcus tilted his head, confusion sparkling behind his brown eyes. They’d been listening to music while they worked, but she hadn’t responded to anything the way she responded to this.

          “I hadn’t,” he said with a glance at the MP3 player, still sketching his final route outlines on maps of the surrounding area. “Not until Bellamy brought this back from Mount Weather and gave it to me. It was already on here when I got it. Where do you think you heard it?”

          Abby scowled for a moment, furrowing her brow as she focused on the beat of the music.

         “I think…Marcus, I think they played it at our Unity Day dance. You’ve heard it before, too. Don’t you remember?”

          _Oh. Right._

         He remembered, but he wished he didn’t.

         Marcus smiled, because he had to. Because it was the right thing to do, because it kept him from falling down the rabbit hole composed of everything that could have been. Because the alternative was losing himself in the very few scattered memories he had of her that night, of how her silver dress glowed like the moon and how her smile shone like the sun under the Ark’s lights.

        They were just a bunch of kids back then, him and her and Jake, and he hadn’t known how he felt. Not really. There were the very basic things that he understood, as every teenage boy does: he knew his heartbeat sped up when she was close. He knew that when they studied together, he spent more time sneaking glances at her than reading his textbooks. He knew she was as engrained in his head as the Traveler’s Blessing, that he could picture her brown eyes as clearly as all the maps of Earth they’d been required to memorize in order to pass their examinations.

         And then there were the things he didn’t understand. He didn’t know why he felt so envious when Jake made her laugh. He didn’t know why he was happiest when he was around her, why he felt like the world was in color when he was at her side and black and white when she left. But who did know, at that age? What teenager took those symptoms and signs and diagnosed himself with that one incurable ailment?

         He smiled, because he had to. Because it was the right thing to do, because the alternative was remembering how he had wanted to ask her to dance when he heard those first guitar chords. How he’d yearned to walk over to her under the fractured starlight and place his hands on her tiny waist while she slid her fingers around his neck.

        He had taken one step toward her, pulse racing and limbs shaking, when some other boy grabbed her hand.

        “You wanna dance, sweetheart?” he’d asked, and he may as well have stuck a knife in Marcus’ gut.

         Abby said yes. She’d never even seen Marcus try to approach her. But of course she’d say yes, he told himself, she’d be stupid not to: this guy was taller than him, more muscular than him, more attractive than him – Marcus knew he was only ever going to be her friend, anyway, so he might as well befriend that concept and spend as much time with it as he spent with Abby. He retreated to the dark corner by the punch bowl, where he could be alone with his regret until the next song came on.

         “Oh. You’re right. Wow, that was forever ago,” he said with false levity, startled to find himself suddenly trying to mend the heart of that teenage boy who hadn’t quite gotten up the guts to ask the girl he liked to dance.

           _“Today is gonna be the day that they’re gonna throw it back to you,”_  the singer crooned, and all Marcus wanted to do was change the song.

            _“By now, you should’ve somehow realized what you’ve gotta do…”_

           His heart was in his throat and he despised the way his palms had started to sweat. Dumbfounded and anxious, he reached over to the traitorous MP3 player to switch the tune to something that didn’t call forth horrific memories from his childhood. As he reached forward, he made a mental note to ask Bellamy or Jasper to delete the song. He hadn’t really liked it, anyway.

           Abby prevented him from stopping it just in time, resting her hand over his as he extended his pointer finger to hit the “next” button.

           “Marcus,” she said. He looked up at her in confusion, and he desperately hoped he wasn’t imagining the warmth he saw in her eyes. “Do you want to dance with me?”

           He wanted to say something, but his tongue had turned to lead in his mouth and every neuron in his brain had ceased firing, so he simply nodded.

            _“I don’t believe that anybody feels the way I do, about you now…”_

           He stood up from his papers and maps and carefully placed his hands on her waist, feeling the warmth of her body radiate through her thin shirt. She slipped her soft hands around his neck, and they began to sway back and forth to the gentle pulsing of the music.

          Despite all the years that had passed and the feelings he’d gotten over, processed, and locked up inside his heart, it was all he could do to keep breathing when their gaze met. In the dim light from the lamp on his nightstand she was as dazzling as she had been in that silver dress, under that tiny disco ball that made it seem as though time itself had slowed to a stop.

_“Back beat, the word is on the street that the fire in your heart is out…”_

         And suddenly, he wasn’t there with her at all. He was back on the Ark after Jake Griffin’s execution, watching the strongest woman he knew collapse in tears into her daughter’s arms. To him, Abby Griffin had always been that fire, a roaring, passionate inferno, and his sinking heart knew he’d just doused that flame.

        _“I’m sure you’ve heard it all before, but you never really had a doubt. I don’t believe that anybody feels the way I do, about you now…”_

         He’d known, when he watched Jake fly out of the open airlock, that his friendship with her would never be the same. But he’d never anticipated how they’d scream at each other across the council room, openly glare at each other in public, sling threats and insults whenever they saw fit.

         She was one of the most loved citizens on the Ark, one of the most popular council members, and he was the cold-hearted enforcer of the law. She was the woman with everlasting hope, the woman who healed the sick, and he was the man with a strength not weakened by sentiment.

        _“And all the roads we have to walk are winding. And all the lights that lead us there are blinding…”_

        And he was on the ground now, staring out at the blinding sunlight, wondering how the hell it made sense for a man like him to breathe the sweet Earthen air when his mother had died among the stars. Everything was clear and everything was clouded, he knew what needed to be done but wasn’t sure how best to do it.

        He didn’t want to hurt her, but he had to. Over and over and over again, he didn’t want to harm her but he ended up breaking her heart as a consolation prize for achieving some other damned goal. No matter how hard he tried, how hard he fought and begged and pleaded with the stars and the universe, she ended up on that Mount Weather operating table and he had to watch.

_“There are many things that I would like to say to you, but I don’t know how…”_

         He glanced down at her then, how petite and striking she was in the waning light of day, and she gave him a small smile. He felt his chest crack open a bit as he smiled back, knowing she could never understand all the things running through his head.

          He could have told her a long time ago. He could have told her when he got back from meeting Lexa for the first time, when she said she feared she wouldn’t see him again. He could have told her when they were stuck in the rubble of TonDC, when she told him she wasn’t going to leave him. He could have told her when they walked back from Mount Weather, hand-in-hand.

          But it had never felt right. There were so many things that needed addressed, concerns that weren’t related to the words that always ran around the tip of his tongue and danced on his lips when she was around. There was either a war knocking on their front door, a murderous mountain, or a missing daughter, and he wouldn’t say anything until they found relative peace in the chaos of their lives.

         So he waited, and he watched the clock, and he wondered when his mother’s God would give him a sign that the time had arrived for him to let those words fly from his mouth and into the open air.

        _“Because maybe, you’re gonna be the one that saves me…”_

        In spite of everything, in spite of how they fought and yelled, in spite of their less-than-savory history, she hadn’t given up on him. She saw the sunlight peeking through the thunderstorm in his heart, and instead of going inside she decided to wait outside in the rain, in the hail, letting the lightning and thunder surround her until it all passed.

       She could have hated him forever, and Marcus thought she probably should have. When they got to the ground, she could’ve had nothing to do with him for the rest of her life, and she would have been justified in making that choice. And yet, somehow, she found it in her beautiful, hopeful heart to forgive him. To change him, to bring him back to the light when he thought the darkness had swallowed him whole. To show him another way.

        Now, as he looked at her while they swayed to the music, he wondered what she’d ever seen in him that she felt was worth saving. He wondered when she’d seen that seed of redemption in him, and wondered if she knew that its growth and bloom was largely because of her.

        He wondered if he’d ever really fallen out of love with her, if he’d ever truly stopped being enraptured by her hope and her fiery spirit, or if he’d condemned himself to continually repeating that lie until he believed it. Now, listening to this song with her in his arms, he was inclined to believe the latter.

       _“And after all, you’re my wonderwall…”_

       Marcus Kane wasn’t as religious as his mother had been, but he knew Abby’s presence in his life was a gift from above. When he looked at her he believed in miracles, although at times he felt as though miracles didn’t believe in him.

        But to him, she was one. She was his miracle. She was his silver lining on his darkest day. She was his four-leafed clover in a field full of grass.

       She was his wonderwall.

       Lost in thought, he accidentally stepped on her foot. It was a mistake that hurled him from his dream world back into an equally pleasant reality, although he suddenly felt like the awkward teenager he had been all those years ago when he first clamored for this moment.

      “Sorry,” he said quietly, not wanting to ruin this dance and feeling as if perhaps he already had. Abby just laughed and moved closer to him, resting her forearms on the tips of his shoulder blades.

      “I wouldn’t be Chancellor if I couldn’t handle getting my feet stepped on,” she murmured back.

       Her lips were close enough to his ear that he could feel the beads of moisture condensed in her breath, and he wondered if she knew how deeply, truly, completely in over his head he was. Could she feel his pulse racing? Could she sense how he was both thrilled and terrified, how he felt as if he were both living and dying in her arms?

       Her closeness was both ripping him apart and holding him together. The effect was intoxicating. It was like nothing he’d ever experienced, and he was almost certain he’d never experience it again.

        _“You’re gonna be the one that saves me…you’re gonna be the one that saves me…”_

        Eventually the vocalist sang his final note. The guitar’s final chord rang out, and then all was silent. Marcus realized the song must have been the last in a playlist, because nothing came on afterward: he and Abby were surrounded by silence in the wake of their dance, and he wasn’t quite sure what to do next.

       In the song’s last seconds she had leaned in to rest her head on his shoulder, and he didn’t want to do anything to make her move. Everything in this moment was absolutely, breathtakingly perfect, and he almost wondered if he’d dreamt it all.

       Yet even when he dreamt of her, his dreams weren’t this spectacular. They weren’t this mesmerizing. This was a perfection saved only for reality, and he wanted to freeze the hands of time so that he could live in it forever.

      But time did what it always did: it changed things. He was taken completely by surprise when Abby lifted her head from his shoulder, leaned forward on her tiptoes, and whispered in his ear again.

       “I wanted to dance with  _you_ , Marcus.”


End file.
